OSLO (Reuters) - Birds have been moving north in Europe over the
past 25 years because of climate change in the vanguard of likely huge
shifts in the ranges of plants and animals, scientists said on
Wednesday.

A study of 42 rare bird species in Britain showed that southern
European bird species such as the Dartford warbler, Cirl bunting,
little egret or Cetti's warbler had become more common in Britain from
1980-2004.

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And species usually found in northern Europe, such as the fieldfare,
redwing or Slavonian grebe, had become less frequent in Britain.

"The species are almost certainly responding to the changing
climate," said Brian Huntley of Durham University in England of a
report he wrote with researchers at Cambridge University and the Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds.

The study tried to filter out other factors that would affect counts
of rare birds, including growing public interest that could mean more
sightings. Shifts in farming, pollution, expansion of cities and
conservation efforts have all affected wildlife.

Birds and butterflies are among the first to adapt to climate change
because they can fly long distances to seek a cooler habitat. Other
creatures and plants can take far longer if their traditional range
gets too warm.

"It depends on the mobility of the species. Birds and butterflies
are two of the groups where there is the best evidence that species are
already showing responses to the changing climate," Huntley told
Reuters of the study in Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

GREENHOUSE GASES

The shifts in the birds' ranges since 1980 were also consistent with
scientists' expectations because of global warming, blamed by the U.N.
Climate Panel on human use of fossil fuels in power plants, factories
and cars, he said.

The panel predicted last year that warming will bring
desertification, floods, melt glaciers, raise world sea levels, bring
big shifts in the ranges of species and extinctions.

"This gives us greater confidence in the climate models we use for
other groups of species -- butterflies, plants, reptiles and
amphibians," Huntley said.

"We rarely have the opportunity to test these kinds of models. We
can only wait around for 50 years and wait to see if we were correct.
It's better to have historic data" as a benchmark, he said.